3. Your school may have a rule saying that tattoos and piercings aren’t allowed or must be covered.

4. Many employers won’t hire people who have visible tattoos or piercings.

5. Other places where people stick you with needle–like doctors’ offices and hospitals–are required by law to follow sterile operating practices. Most tattoo and piercing parlors aren’t. Most states don’t regulate tattoo or piercing parlors at all.

6. Anytime you introduce a foreign object into your body, you risk infection. According to another recent study, people with tattoos are nine times more likely to be infected with hepatitis C, a potentially deadly liver disease. According to another recent study, 17 percent of students with piercings had medical complications including bacterial infections, bleeding, and injury or tearing. The same infected blood and needles that spread hepatitis C can also spread HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

7. Oral piercings can lead to infection, prolonged and uncontrollable bleeding, nerve damage, and swelling. Your tongue could swell up large enough to close off your airway. Mouth jewelry can injure your gums, chip or crack your teeth, and stimulate excessive saliva production, causing problems with chewing, swallowing, and talking. If mouth jewelry comes loose, it’s an instant choking hazard.

8. Except for nose piercings and ear piercings high on the ear (through the cartilage), many holes will eventually close up when you remove the jewelry. But a tattoo is permanent. If you decide later in life that you want to get rid of it, your choices are: (a) covering it up with a bigger one, (b) excision (having a doctor cut it out, then stitch you back together), (c) dermabrasion (having a doctor scrape, sand, or chemically peel it off your skin), or (d) laser removal.

9. You can’t donate blood for a year from the date you get your tattoo or piercing.

10. Do you like the same clothes you liked last year? The same music? What makes you think you’ll like the same tattoo or piercing next week, or next month, or next year?